BAY HILL INVITATIONAL PRESENTED BY COOPER TIRES

March 21, 2003

Peter Lonard

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Peter, for joining us for five minutes in the interview room.

Good round today. You were in the fairway at 15 before the rain delay. Why don't you just talk about before the rain delay, after the rain delay, and what you did during the rain delay and your round today.

PETER LONARD: In that order? All right. Obviously there's a bit of a contrasting difference between before the rain came and after the rain came. I expected the course -- well the course was a little bit softer this morning which I probably expected compared to yesterday afternoon. I thought the greens got really firm yesterday.

I thought they were still quite firm, not as soft as I expected them to be this morning but they were still relatively receptive to some decent iron shots. The par 3s are playing relatively long, so you have to hit long irons in there and it was an effort to get them to stop.

We come back out after 15. 17, I landed one, a 6-iron, probably stopped within five paces of where it landed which and I it's definitely playing a little easier now.

During the rain delay, I just sat on my bum. (Laughter.)

Q. Fun to be playing all of these Invitationals and having a place at Augusta this time around the league?

PETER LONARD: Yeah, like I played here last year, so I knew what to expect. They are all pretty good. I don't really distinguish between many of them. I think they are all great to play in. There is not one where I'm walking away thinking that I don't want to come back to.

Obviously Augusta is going to be a special time. I'll probably be the oldest player there for the first time I would have thought. It will be nice driving down Magnolia Lane. I don't think I can drive my truck but we'll see what happens.

Q. How much of an advantage is it going to be to the people just starting out, playing nine or ten holes in these soft conditions?

PETER LONARD: Well, I think it's got to be an advantage a little bit. But they are going dealing with a lot of mud on their golf balls and probably some borderline lies, like down the last, I only had about an 8-iron in. I wasn't bringing up water when I was standing up but I knew it was pretty soggy, when I walked past it do you know 15, there was a puddle where my ball was. It was a fine line between hitting a good shot off that so the of stuff and hitting a pretty ordinary he one.

The greens are definitely a bit easier. I think the difficulties with the greens is probably that they are really hard but they are quite slow. It's a funny contrast. Like normally, you get really hard greens sometimes but normally the really hard greens are really fast greens, as well. So I haven't really come to terms with it. Just hit it pretty good and chipped all right.

Q. Did you find something in your swing? You didn't seem to be happy with the way you were playing going into the tournament.

PETER LONARD: I thought you were going to bring up my 78 at Doral last Friday. Even through The Match Play, I didn't really play that good. I just fought it out and being one-on-one I probably got away with a little more than I probably would have if it was like a full-field event stroke-play. Though it was a good finish, I didn't play my best.

Doral, played terrible. So it was nice to have last week off. I came back to Kings Point and did a whole week of practice and worked a bit on my short game and, yeah, I felt like I was hitting the ball really well at the start of the week. The practice rounds and the Pro-Am, I didn't score very well so I was sort of a little leery. If I'm hitting really good and can't break par -- but things came together today apart from the three part on the last.

Q. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there some kind of injury that you're supposed to be resting for at this time of year?

PETER LONARD: That was all over. At the last tournament in Australia I chipped a bone in my thumb and it sort of got caught in the joint. I played last round there and got away with it with the anti-inflammatories and all that sort of stuff.

I went and took an ultrasound and they found a bone. I said, "Well, what do I do to get rid of it, how many weeks do I need to take off?"

They said, "If you want to get rid of it, definitely, seven weeks." So seven weeks took me to Augusta so that wasn't really an option, I didn't think. So I've just been looking after it, a lot of stretching, physio, icing it and it's been fantastic so it's really to problem.

Q. You went head-to-head with Ernie, however long ago that was on Sunday, can you sort of speak to the way he's been playing and this sustained stretch of pretty incredible golf he's had this year, four firsts and a second in stroke-play?

PETER LONARD: It's been wonderful golf, hasn't it? I think I played the first two rounds of the tournament that he won with him and I think he'd be the first one to say that he really didn't hit it that good the first couple of days, but he hung around, and I think that's what champions do. When they are not playing well they seem to squeeze the best out of their game, hover around and on last day got it together and played fantastic.

Obviously, the scoring has been really good. The fact that he's been able to maintain it, changing time zones, like he's not going one hour one way and one hour the other way. He's going 13 hours one way and 20 hours the other way. That's phenomenal. I think he's obviously a lot fitter than he looks because that's pretty hard.

Q. Did you play with him the last day in Australia?

PETER LONARD: No. The last day he was a couple of group as head of us when he posted the score. I didn't catch him.

Q. What happened?

PETER LONARD: We were all-square going down the last and they had a bit of a tight pin and I went for it and hit it in the bunker and didn't get it up-and-down. Handed to him, unfortunately.

Q. Do you like playing the hard courses and did you think that maybe yesterday was too severe or did that bother you at all? There's been a little bit of grumbling.

PETER LONARD: Well, the course definitely plays hard. It's just the greens are so firm. That's the big deal, the par 3s are so long. That's probably pretty accurate; it's pretty hard to get it on 17 green. Like I hit 6-iron, hit it on the left edge, probably three yards left of the front of the trap and it rolled probably -- I don't know, must have been 25, 26 yards offer the back of the fringe. You know, you were not going to land it in a better position, so that's where it's tough.

You know, it's almost like major golf, I suppose. You've got to hit the fairways. If you don't hit the fairways, you're really struggling. You've got to position your shots on the greens. You just can't keep going at the flags. You've just got to make your pars and go to the next. Pars are important.

Q. Is it nice to have that at a non-major event after all of the high scoring?

PETER LONARD: Yeah, I don't have a problem with courses where par is important. I think I probably play better at that than -- I'd sooner not playing a tournament where 30-under is going to win, as opposed to 10-under is going to win.

I'm reasonably happy with it. No complaints from me.

Q. How much of an advantage is it to have your second round finished while a lot of players may have to play 30 holes tomorrow?

PETER LONARD: It was nice to get it finished. I get to sleep in tomorrow. It gets pretty hard but they are pretty used to playing 30 holes in a day. I don't think it's a great advantage. I don't think it makes that much difference.

Q. Did you play THE PLAYERS last year?

PETER LONARD: No. I've never played it before.

Q. Do you go there this first time to see it -- did you have a preconceived notion of that golf course, because there always is so much talk about it, discussion?

PETER LONARD: I haven't really thought much about it, to be honest with you. I snuck up there last year, maybe August or something and played just to have a look.

Your concepts of what it's like on TV and concepts of what it's like when you get there are usually quite different. I expect it to be reasonably quite big and I found it was relatively small greens. It's one of the -- well, fifth major, most of the guys are calling it. So to get out there and give it a go next week, I'm probably looking forward to it.

Q. Same type of question for Augusta. Have you gone out there yet to take a look?

PETER LONARD: No. I went and watched it in '97. Just sort of hung around for the week and watched what was going on. That was the same sort of deal. On TV, I thought the greens were really big. When you actually get there they are quite small. All of the edges are shaved. I think it's pretty similar to an Australian course, where the greens run off and the ball rolls away from the green. I'm looking forward to going there. I know there's a lot of local knowledge and whatever. Whether I've got my homework done enough to know when to go and not to go, I don't know, but we'll find out in a couple of weeks, I suppose.

Q. How long did you hang around in '97? Were you there when Sunday when Tiger won?

PETER LONARD: I wasn't there when he finished. Golfers are not very good spectators, I don't think. I just sort of walked around, looking at a few of the holes, a few different holes each day and ended up back at the hotel.

Q. During the break, were you or were there any players watching television, just the bombing of Iraq?

PETER LONARD: Yeah, definitely. They were all watching it.

Q. A lot of players gathered?

PETER LONARD: Well, you know, we're all sort of separated a little bit with the locker room and the players thing. The guys that were there were all watching that. That's what the TVs were watching.

Q. Any conversation between you guys during that?

PETER LONARD: Not a lot of conversation. It was just -- I don't know. It seems quite strange to be watching something that could be so devastating on TV. It's hard to explain what everyone's feelings were about it.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Can we go through your round?

PETER LONARD: The third, I hit an 8-iron to four feet and holed it.

The fourth, I hit a good second shot just off the back fringe of the green and chipped it down to about four feet and holed it.

I bogeyed 9. I hit a good drive. I hit a 4-iron into the right trap. Just ran the edge from about six feet.

12, hit a 3-wood to about 12 feet and missed it.

The par 5, 16, I hit one of those rescue clubs to about 25, 30 feet and I 2-putted.

17, I hit it to about 10, 12 feet -- actually probably a little longer than that.

I didn't judge the speed on my long putts at all this week. Yeah, I was trying to hard to work on the line and get the line right I forgot how hard to hit it.

Q. How long have you had that rescue club in the bag, how do you like it and what did it replace?

PETER LONARD: I carried two clubs in lieu of that. I carried a 3-iron on some courses and a carried a 7-wood on other courses. 3-iron was about 230 and 7-wood about 230, as well, just totally different trajectories. Rescue is best of both words, I can hit a soft one 230 or smash one 240. I can hit it right-to-left, left-to-right, so it's a great utility club. It's a very special club.

Q. Why the Web site?

PETER LONARD: I don't know. Manager thought it was a good idea. Some people are interested. The Australians are interested in finding out what's going on, and that way they can just look it up on the Web site and see what's going on and see where I am, if I've still alive, given up golf, taken up football, who knows.

Q. The Masters, when did you first start considering that you might be able to qualify for that?

PETER LONARD: Augusta, probably with two weeks to go last year, I suppose.

Q. And when did you first think that that would be like a destination for you, how far back do you go?

PETER LONARD: Well, I think that's every pro golfer's dream to end up at Augusta at some point in time. Obviously, '95, '96, '97, I thought that was a faraway possibility, I didn't think there was a chance. Things have snowballed a bit and so here we go.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Peter.

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